Investment management

If you want to be successful, you have to harness the talent. The top private equity firms have a genius for hiring superior talent. All organizations need great people, but PE measures talent with one test only: performance. It’s not that private equity firms are heartless. Rather, their three- to five-year time horizon doesn’t allow […]

One study found that people were willing to pay about 21% more for a product when they were told it was crowdfunded.

In this article, Bob Zider, president of the Beta Group, a California-based firm that invests in commercializing new technologies, presents an analysis...

Times change and markets transform themselves overnight. The half-life of common wisdom is shorter than ever. But top private equity firms have distilled a set of institutional habits that boost the likelihood of their success. What’s critical to this success? Attitude. PE leaders take pains to foster a “results-oriented mind-set”. In short, that means creating […]

Does high-quality venture financing increase the success of funded ventures? My co-authors, Josh Lerner of HBS and Antoinette Schoar of MIT, and I define...

Entrepreneurship is more celebrated, studied, and desirable than ever. Business school students flock to courses on entrepreneurship. Managers, fearful of losing their step on the corporate ladder, yearn to step off on their own. Policymakers pin their hopes for job creation and economic growth on start-ups rather than on the once-preeminent corporate giants. Belief in […]

One can fuel the other.

Here’s what that means for VCs and entrepreneurs.

When conflict arises between the tenets of competitive analysis and those of financial analysis, it's not the theory at fault but the practice. Good project...

It was arguably the first financial scandal to play out in the public eye--and even Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe got behind it.

It’s easy to turn off prospective investors. Just feed them the same old lines.

The deck is stacked against entrepreneurs who aren't in San Francisco Bay, New York, or Boston.

When entrepreneurs get financing from big VC firms, they often lose control over their idea and their business. An increasing number are unwilling to make that deal.

New organizations are emerging in its place—organizations that are corporate in form but have no public shareholders and are not listed or traded on organized exchanges. These organizations use public and private debt, rather than public equity, as their major source of capital. Their primary owners are not households but large institutions and entrepreneurs that […]

Instead of casting a wide net, try a more strategic approach.

Increased public scrutiny, decreased stock-option appeal, and the relentless expectations of Wall Street are taking their toll on a once high-flying consultancy. Is going private the way out?

Research shows how corporate and scientific R&D have splintered since the 1970s.

Three paradoxes, and a strategy.

It’s not just about growth.

A new paper shows how leveraged buyouts lead to more patents.